I've tried and failed many times to keep IRC in my workflow. I always wind up opening it for a few days/weeks then eventually just kinda fizzle out.

My company installed slack and it was just like wildfire - the whole team was on it instantly and never have looked back.

If there was a client + bot setup that would offer the same functionality out of the box over IRC I'm sure we would have picked it up just as quickly. And I would have liked to be on the irc channel for a few of my favorite OS projects as well. But as far as I know, without there is no such setup?